UK - The political battle of our age is not between Left and Right, but sane and insane. Europe and America have never seemed further apart, as Trump and his cronies attempt to push the politics of personal vengeance worldwide. What a ritual dance this is turning out to be. Reform represents a threat from the Right, so Labour shuffles rightwards. The Tories, having worn Leftish clothes for a decade, move to what used to be seen as solid Right-wing ground, hoping to push Reform onto the more extreme edge which would be unacceptable to the electorate. But the truth is that the most important political battle of the day is not between Right and Left at all. It is about rationality versus insanity. The arguments dominating the news are not ones we used to regard as the currency of modern politics.

ISRAEL - Until the world begins to prioritize truth over narrative, Israel will be forced to live in a backward world of lies and slander. One of the mental health steps I’ve taken this year is trying my very best to limit myself to checking (not posting) social media once a day and only checking the news two or three times a day. I don’t always succeed, but when I do, I feel much better. There are times, though, that even when I only check the news or social media infrequently, I still feel like giving up. The lies, slander, and completely inverted world make me think there’s no hope of teaching the truth. Today’s world is a ship with a gaping hole, and we are only given a small paper cup to dish out the water. No matter how many books the pro-Israel side writes, columns they publish, and social media videos Zionists post, their voices get drowned out by the lies. It seems we are living in an inverted world (it’s a Hebrew phrase that sounds better in the original) where true is false, and false is true, and no one can tell the difference anymore.

USA - If it seems too good to be true, it’s probably false. Ditto if it seems too bad or too sad. Such is virtual reality in cybersphere in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). It’s manipulative. Move over spam email, make way for “slop” social media posts. We’ve (nearly) all seen them, and most of us have been fooled at least once. Slop refers to low-quality AI-produced content, usually emotional images and tall tales that grab our attention. They often give the initial impression of being a true story – the dog that rescues a kitten, the bride and groom overcoming tragedies and challenges, success stories against all odds, and historical tales – somehow replete with photos from before the age of photography. Together with AI-generated videos, the sky’s the limit. Take, for instance, the deep fake video that went viral in July showing Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office as he sits with President Donald Trump. Some people found it amusing; others found it offensive. All should see it as disturbing. When you can’t tell true from false, it creates chaos.

USA - Microsoft says it has disabled some cloud and artificial intelligence services used by the Israeli military after an internal review found they were being used to conduct mass surveillance on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The tech giant said it had cancelled an Israeli ministry of defence subscription to its Azure cloud services after media reports last month that a surveillance unit within the Israel Defence Forces had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls. In a post on the company’s website announcing the decision, Brad Smith, its president, said Microsoft’s investigation had been guided by the group’s “longstanding protection of privacy as a fundamental right”.

NATO - Nato’s secretary-general says he agrees with President Trump after a series of incidents over European airspace. Nato’s secretary-general has said member states should shoot down intruding Russian aircraft “if so necessary” after President Trump encouraged allies to respond to incursions with force. Mark Rutte, speaking during a trip to Washington after a flurry of incidents where drones and jets flew over Nato airspace, said he “totally agreed” with Trump’s message.

RUSSIA - Any NATO member state that shoots down a Russian warplane would trigger a “war” with Russia, Moscow’s envoy to Paris, Aleksey Meshkov, has warned. Last Friday, Estonia claimed that Russian military aircraft had briefly violated its airspace, due to which Tallinn requested urgent consultations with fellow NATO members. Earlier this month, Poland alleged that multiple Russian decoy drones entered its territory. Moscow has denied both sets of allegations. According to the Russian diplomat, “quite a lot of [NATO military] planes accidentally or not accidentally violate our airspace. And no one shoots them down.” He also insisted that NATO member states have failed to produce “material” evidence to back up their accusations.

EUROPE - Putin is a pound-shop Stalin who could easily be defeated if only the West had the will. But our leaders lack all self-belief. Europe, the continent that gave the world democracy, Pax Romana, the Renaissance, the Great Explorers, the libertarian ideals of the Scottish enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the emancipation of slavery, is now the world’s laughing stock. Our leaders are non-player characters in the story of our spiral into oblivion, standing by as we rush towards civilisational seppuku. Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen: all are political pygmies, interchangeable in their incompetence, cowardice and lack of vision. Even Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, the only semi-decent major Western European leader, hasn’t reversed her country’s own hara-kiri. Friedrich Merz, hardly Germany’s Thatcher, won’t save his country. Their once great nations are sliding ever faster into irrelevance and impotence, and failing on every count: economic, military, moral, demographic, technological and geopolitical. They have lost the world’s respect, except as a shopping destination, theme park or finishing school. This is how great civilisations finally die.

USA - The shooting of Charlie Kirk has led to a wave of Christian fervour across social media. Even atheists claim to have been converted. In the two weeks since Kirk’s killing, pastors across the country have reported a spike in attendance usually reserved for Christmas or Easter. Social media has been filled with testimonies from young people turning to Christianity for the first time, with even atheists saying they are reconsidering their position on religion. Pastors have coined a term for the religious revival galvanised by Kirk’s death: the Charlie effect. At State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, 200,000 gathered for his memorial on Sunday, where President Trump and four members of his cabinet delivered eulogies.

UNITED NATIONS - To UN delegates who say recognition is about “reviving hope,” the answer is simple: tie hope to behavior. “As if to encourage continued conflict, some of this body is seeking to unilaterally recognize the Palestinian state. The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists, for their atrocities,” US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly. That is the brutal core of this week in New York: a feel-good rush to recognize Palestine, while Hamas still holds hostages and fires at Israeli cities. Western leaders insist their move does not whitewash October 7. “Recognizing Palestine does not diminish the gravity of the October 7 attack,” French President Emmanuel Macron said, defending recognition as part of a broader political track. The United Kingdom framed its decision as a bid to “keep alive the possibility of peace,” with Prime Minister Keir Starmer adding, “This is not a reward for Hamas because it means Hamas can have no future, no role in government, no role in security.”

UK - Compassion that takes imprudent risks with the lives of the vulnerable is not a virtue at all. When Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults Bill to legalise assisted suicide for the dying reached the House of Lords, peers faced a dilemma. On the one hand, they heard the persistent concern of advocates for the disabled and several Royal Colleges about the risks of abuse and corrosion of humane social norms that legalisation threatens. On the other hand, their compassion was aroused by stories of individuals suffering grievously, whose plight couldn’t be assuaged by palliative care, and of those helping them find relief through suicide having to endure police investigation. The bill, urged Lord Falconer of Thoroton, would resolve this intolerably cruel situation. Except it wouldn’t. By limiting assisted suicide to the terminally ill, the bill excludes those who aren’t dying but are still suffering grievously. And it would still bring the police to the door of those assisting them commit suicide.

UNITED NATIONS - Donald Trump accused the United Nations of 'funding an assault' on the West through immigration and warned Europe is 'going to hell' in an astonishing address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. The US President called for an end to 'the failed experiment of open borders' as he lauded the success of his own hard line immigration crackdown. He called recognition by a slate of Washington's allies of a Palestinian state a 'reward' to armed group Hamas for 'horrible atrocities' and urged the group to release hostages to reach peace. He went on to champion the decision to bring the National Guard into Washington DC to crack down on crime - a move derided by critics as echoing authoritarianism. Trump also branded climate change a 'scam', against the dominant scientific view. There were audible gasps and several delegates shook their heads, the BBC reported.

MIDDLE EAST - Mosab Hassan Yousef was once a Shin Bet spy embedded in the terror organisation his father founded. Mosab Hassan Yousef is an unlikely Israeli hero. As the oldest son of Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas and its spiritual leader in the West Bank, Mr Yousef rose through the ranks of the terror group as a child and saw the militants’ atrocities first-hand. But after a stint in Israeli jails as a teenager for smuggling arms, he changed sides, secretly emerging as a Shin Bet spy embedded in the terrorist organisation his father helped run – a position he held for almost 10 years. Just as the UK, France, Canada, Portugal and other Western democracies stand poised to formally recognise Palestine as a state at the UN in New York on Monday, Mr Yousef says no such country exists.

UK - The recognition of a Palestinian state is one of the gravest errors in our nation’s foreign policy in decades. Tomorrow Sir Keir Starmer will formally announce that Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood. While symbolic in most respects – Britain ceased to be the colonial power in the region in 1948 – there will be at least one real world impact: Hamas will be able to point to a tangible outcome of its terror campaign against Israel, and claim its tactics work.

UK - This is a decision that will come back to haunt the prime minister and one that will reverberate globally for years. It’s not often I see a story of Hamas celebrating, at least not since the delirious joy that greeted the attack on October 7 when operatives stormed over the border, raped and murdered, seemingly with the kind of glee that most ordinary people reserve for family occasions. Afterwards, Hamas leaders helpfully came on to the airwaves to explain that they would commit mass murder again and again, if they had half a chance, not so they could kill some Jews, but all Jews, as proclaimed in their charter.

ISRAEL - "I have a clear message to those leaders who are recognizing a Palestinian state after the horrendous October 7 massacre: You are rewarding terror with an enormous prize. And I have another message for you: It’s not going to happen. There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River. For years I have prevented the creation of that terror state, against tremendous pressure, both domestic and from abroad. We have done this with determination, and with astute statesmanship. Moreover, we have doubled the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, and we will continue on this path. The response to the latest attempt to force upon us a terror state in the heart of our land will be given after my return from the United States. Stand by."